Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I'm starting to think that the stretch of road that is my bus route to work must be owned by G-Star, as there isn't a vertical space in sight that hasn't been bedecked with their brooding, grimace-heavy ad campaign. They must be doing something right as here I am about to discuss G-Star (something that would be quite unlikely under normal circumstances). This ad in particular is the source of considerable perturbation:

Vincent Gallo is such a babe! But he's such an asshole! Why is he doing a G-Star ad? Those clothes suck! Why do I care about this?! He's such a babe!

I guess you could say I'm feeling a lot of feelings.

In fact this G-Star ad series is one of many that fits into the category of 'What's a nice campaign like you doing with a shitty label like that?'. I'm especially unnerved by G-Star's decision to use Magnus Carlsen (the world's number one chess guy) as a model:

Such an undeniably cool move - especially for a decidedly lame label.

Another member of the WANCLYDWASLLT? club is Blumarine, though admittedly it has take me a while to come to terms with the fact that Anna Molinari's wares just don't do it for me. Why the consternation? Because Tim Walker's 2003/04 photographs for Blumarine are the most beautiful things I've ever seen:

And Walker was at it again for Juicy Couture:

I guess it just goes to show, you can't polish a turd but you can sure roll it in glitter.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Solestruck is a website that I more or less stopped perusing after coming to the conclusion that Jeffrey Campbell shoes are really quite ugly (I expect my Blogger-girl Union membership will be revoked shortly). I'll give credit where it's due, however. Those kids stock some pretty serious shoes:

Sunday, September 18, 2011

There have been rumblings recently about the return of the bias-cut dress. My favourite examples of this style come from the time of its invention, the 1930s. Old Wallis Simpson's Mainbocher wedding dress is undoubtedly the queen (oh...) of the genre.

Another wedding dress, however, one that was worn nearly fifty years after Ed and Wally did the deed, is a strong contender for the most beautiful bias-cut dress. It is the Narciso Rodriguez gown worn by Carolyn Bessette when she married John F. Kennedy, Jr.

In August 2003 Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Edward Klein's pretty trashy-sounding, The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years. Klein details how the Rodriguez dress did not include a zipper (!) and that on the day, horror of horrors, Carolyn found herself unable to put the thing on. It was only after Gordon Henderson, a friend and designer (who, incidentally, had been crushed by Carolyn's decision to not go with one of his own creations), put a scarf over her head, that they were able to slide the dress onto the 'hysterical' bride.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is a movie replete with brilliantly beautiful (and beautifully brilliant) costumes, but at the moment (and I go through phases) I only have eyes for the Hawaiian shirts favoured by the Montague boys:

Shame of shames, I have never noticed until now the Japanese influence evident in these prints. According to Chicken Soup from the Soul of Hawaii: Stories of Aloha to Create Paradise by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, this is because the first Hawaiian shirts were in fact made from kimono fabric remnants. Unfortunately the book doesn't give too detailed a history, as I'd be fascinated to know whether the style went into decline after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour.